Bengaluru: Amazon India is investing heavily into its fashion category , likely a response partly to the enormous strength rival Flipkart has gained in the segment on account of its acquisitions of Myntra and Jabong.

The investment ­ which is going into both technology and in offering a much wider choice of products to customers ­ is also a response to the huge growth in the category. Amazon said close to 30% of its total transacting customers shop in fashion. The category grew 150% year-on-year in the first half of 2016, and is now the third biggest store on Amazon, after electronics and consumables.

Mayank Shivam, category leader of Amazon Fashion, said the company is investing a lot on the technolo gy for its fashion segment.“We are increasing the quality of the search results, with asignificant improvement in size discovery . We want to make fashion easy to discover, so as to initiate people into buying fashion online. We also have a dedicated team for fashion, complete with fashion editors and engineering team, which works to bring out newer features,“ he said.The focus is particularly on the mobile app, given that two out of three people shopping for fashion do it on the mobile. “Apparel is the second highest sold category on the app, after electronics. Amazon Fashion contributes close to 40% of the total mobile app sessions of Amazon,“ Shivam said. Almost 55% of the fas hion orders come from tier-2 cities. Shivam said that this is because brands only have a few stores in the smaller cities. Over the past six months, the etailer has doubled the total number of brands on the platform to 15,000. It recently added Aditya Birla Group's private label Abof. Amazon is also introducing six private labels in the run up to its fiveday `Great Indian Sale' that starts on October 1. “Many brands like Peter England, Raymond, and Maanyavar were Amazon-first (started selling online first on Amazon). With private labels, we are focussing on filling selection gaps that customers face,“ Shivam said.

Amazon faces stiff competition from Flipkart in the segment. Besides Flipkart's own collection, it also has the Myntra and Jabong offerings.

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